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50
Years After the CIA’s First Overthrow of a Democratically Elected Foreign
Government, We Take a Look at the 1953 US-Backed Coup in Iran
by
Amy Goodman and Democracy Now
Dissident Voice
August
28, 2003
Transcript of Democracy Now! radio program, August
25, 2003
This
month marks the 50th anniversary of America’s first overthrow of a
democratically-elected government in the Middle East.
In
1953, the CIA and British intelligence orchestrated a coup d’etat that toppled
the democratically elected government of Iran. The government of Mohammad
Mossadegh. The aftershocks of the coup are still being felt.
In
1951 Prime Minister Mossadegh roused Britain's ire when he nationalized the oil
industry. Mossadegh argued that Iran should begin profiting from its vast oil
reserves which had been exclusively controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil
Company. The company later became known as British Petroleum (BP).
After
considering military action, Britain opted for a coup d'état. President Harry
Truman rejected the idea, but when Dwight Eisenhower took over the White House,
he ordered the CIA to embark on one of its first covert operations against a
foreign government.
The
coup was led by an agent named Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of President
Theodore Roosevelt. The CIA leaned on a young, insecure Shah to issue a decree
dismissing Mossadegh as prime minister. Kermit Roosevelt had help from Norman
Schwarzkopf’s father: Norman Schwarzkopf.
The
CIA and the British helped to undermine Mossadegh's government through bribery,
libel, and orchestrated riots. Agents posing as communists threatened religious
leaders, while the US ambassador lied to the prime minister about alleged
attacks on American nationals.
Some
300 people died in firefights in the streets of Tehran.
Mossadegh
was overthrown, sentenced to three years in prison followed by house arrest for
life.
The
crushing of Iran's first democratic government ushered in more than two decades
of dictatorship under the Shah, who relied heavily on US aid and arms. The
anti-American backlash that toppled the Shah in 1979 shook the whole region and
helped spread Islamic militancy.
After
the 1979 revolution President Jimmy Carter allowed the deposed Shah into the
U.S. Fearing the Shah would be sent back to take over Iran as he had been in
1953, Iranian militants took over the U.S. embassy - where the 1953 coup was
staged - and held hundreds hostage.
The
50th anniversary of the coup was front-page news in Iranian newspapers. The Christian Science
Monitor reports one paper in Iran publishing excerpts from CIA documents on the
coup, which were released only three years ago.
The
U.S. involvement in the fall of Mossadegh was not publicly acknowledged until
three years ago. In a New York Times article in April 2000, then-Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright admitted that "the coup was clearly a setback for
Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians
continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs."
[DV
Editor’s Note: Read the New
York Times’ Special Report: The CIA in Iran and the National Security
Archive Briefing Book, The
Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup, 1953]
In
his book All the Shah’s Men, Kinzer argues that "[i]t is not far-fetched
to draw a line from Operation Ajax [the name of the coup] through the Shah's
repressive regime and the Islamic Revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the
World Trade Center in New York."
Stephen
Kinzer, author All the Shah’s Men, An American Coup And The Roots of Middle
East Terror
Prof.
Ervand Abrahamian, Middle East and Iran Expert at Baruch College, City
University of New York . Author of numerous book including Khomeinism: Essays
on the Islamic Republic (University of California Press, 1993).
AMY
GOODMAN: Well, it's good to have you with us. Stephen Kinzer, why don't we
begin with you. This month, August 2003, 50 years ago, the C.I.A. orchestrated
a coup against the democratically elected government of Mohammad Mossadegh. Can
you briefly tell us the story of how this took place?
STEPHEN
KINZER: This was a hugely important episode, and looking at it from the
prospective of history, we can see that it really shaped a lot of the 50 years
that have followed since then in the Middle East and beyond. But yet, it's an
episode that most Americans don't even know happened. As I was writing my book,
I had the sense that I was dredging up an incident that had been largely
forgotten. During my work, I realized early on that Mossadegh, the prime
minister of Iran, had been the Man of the Year for Time magazine in 1951. And
after I realized that, I went to some trouble and I finally located a copy of
that Time magazine. And I framed it, and I have it up on my wall. And it gave
me the feeling that, not only am I digging up this episode again, but I'm
bringing back to life this figure of Mossadegh. He was really a huge figure in
the world of mid-century. This was a time, bear in mind, before the voice of
the Third World, as we now call it, had ever really been raised in world
councils. This was a time before Castro, before Nkrumah, before Sukharno,
before Nasser. Mossadegh actually showing up in New York and laying out Iran's
case and by extension the case of poor nations against rich nations was
something very, very new for the whole world. And what a figure he was. This
book is full of amazing characters. Not just Kermit Roosevelt, the guy who
planned the coup. But Mossaugh--tall, sophisticated, European-educated
aristocrat--but also highly emotional, a guy who would start sobbing and sometimes
even faint dead away in Parliament when giving speeches about the suffering of
the Iranian people. When he embraced the national cause of that period, which
was the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, he set himself on a
collision course with the great powers in the world. And that collision has
produced effects which we're still living with today.
AMY
GOODMAN: Talk about the Anglo- Iranian Oil Company.
STEPHEN
KINZER: The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company arrived in Iran in the early part of the
twentieth century. It soon struck the largest oil well that had ever been found
in the world. And for the next half-century, it pumped out hundreds of millions
of dollars worth of oil from Iran. Now, Britain held this monopoly. That meant
it only had to give Iran a small amount--it turned out to be 16 percent--of the
profits from what it produced. So the Iranian oil is actually what maintained
Britain at its level of prosperity and its level of military preparedness all
throughout the '30s, the '40s, and the '50s. Meanwhile, Iranians were getting a
pittance, they were getting almost nothing from the oil that came out of their
own soil. Naturally, as nationalist ideas began to spread through the world in
the post-World War II era, this injustice came to grate more and more intensely
on the Iranian people. So they carried Mossadegh to power very
enthusiastically. On the day he was elected prime minister, Parliament also
agreed unanimously to proceed with the nationalization of the oil company. And
the British responded as you would imagine. Their first response was disbelief.
They just couldn't believe that someone in some weird faraway country--which
was the way they perceived Iran--would stand up and challenge such an important
monopoly. This was actually the largest company in the entire British Empire.
When it finally became clear that Mossadegh was quite serious, the British
decided to launch an invasion. They drew up plans for seizing the oil refinery
and the oil fields. But President Truman went nuts when he heard this and he
told the British, under no circumstances can we possibly tolerate a British
invasion of Iran. So then the British went to their next plan, which was to get
a United Nations resolution demanding that Mossadegh return the oil company.
But Mossadegh embraced this idea of a U.N. debate so enthusiastically that he
decided to come to New York himself and he was so impressive that the U.N.
refused to adopt the British motion. So finally, the British decided that they
would stage a coup, they would overthrow Mossadegh. But what happened,
Mossadegh found out about this and he did the only thing he could have done to
protect himself against the coup. He closed the British embassy and he sent all
the British diplomats packing, including, among them, all the secret agents who
were planning to stage the coup. So now, the British had to turn to the United
States. They went to Truman and asked him, please overthrow Mossadegh for us.
He said no. He said the C.I.A. had never overthrown a government and, as far as
he was concerned, it never should. So, now, the British were completely without
resources. They couldn't launch an invasion, the U.N. had turned down their
complaint, they had no agents to stage a coup. So they were stymied. It wasn't
until November of 1952 when British foreign office and intelligence officials
received the electrifying news that Dwight Eisenhower had been elected
president that things began to change. They rushed one of their agents over to
Washington. He made a special appeal to the incoming Eisenhower administration.
And that administration reversed the Truman policy agreed to send Kermit
Roosevelt to Tehran to carry out this fateful coup.
AMY
GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy
Goodman on this 50th anniversary of the C.I.A.-backed coup that overthrew the
democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh. We're
talking to Stephen Kinzer. He is author of a new book, All the Shah's Men: An
American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. In a minute, we're going to
go to old film about the coup where former C.I.A. agents talk about their role
in it. But talk about the man in the C.I.A. who spearheaded this, Kermit
Roosevelt.
STEPHEN
KINZER: One of the reasons I wanted to write this book was because I've always
been curious about exactly how you go about overthrowing a government. What do
you do after you choose an agent and assign a lot of money? Exactly how do you
go about doing it? Kermit Roosevelt really is a wonderful way to answer that
question. What happened was this: Kermit Roosevelt, who as you said was Teddy
Roosevelt's grandson, was the Near East director for the C.I.A. He slipped
clandestinely into Iran just around the end of July 1953. He spent a total of
less than three weeks in Iran--that's only how long it took him to overthrow
the government of Mossadegh. And one thing that I did realize as I was piecing
together this story is how easy it is for a rich, powerful country to throw a
poor, weak country into chaos. So what did Roosevelt do? The first thing he did
was he wanted to set Tehran on fire. He wanted to make Iran fall into chaos. So
he bribed a whole number of politicians, members of Parliament, religious
leaders, newspaper editors and reporters, to begin a very intense campaign
against Mossadegh. This campaign was full of denunciatory speeches and lies
about Mossadegh, dated and passed, without bitter denunciations of Mossadegh
from the pulpits and in the streets, on the houses of Parliament. Then,
Roosevelt also went out and bribed leaders of street gangs. You had a kind of
"Mobs 'R' Us," mobs-for-hire, kind of situation existing in Iran that
that time. Roosevelt got in touch with the leaders of these mobs. Finally, he
also bribed a number of military officers who would be willing to bring their
troops in on his side at the appropriate moment. So when that moment came, the
fig leaf of the coup was, as you said, this document that the Shah had signed,
rejecting the prime ministership of Mossadegh, essentially firing him from
office. Now, this was a decree that was of very dubious legality since in
democratic Iran only the Parliament could hire and fire prime ministers.
Nonetheless, the idea was that this decree would be delivered to Mossedegh at his
house at midnight one night and then, when he refused to obey it, as he
probably would, he would be arrested. That was the plot. But what happened was
that the officer that Kermit Roosevelt had chosen to go to Mossdegh's house at
midnight, presented the decree firing Mossadegh and preparing to arrest him but
other, loyal soldiers stepped out of the shadows and arrested him. The coup had
been betrayed. The plot failed. The man who was supposed to arrest Mossadegh
was himself arrested. And Kermit Roosevelt woke up the next day with a cable
from his superiors in the C.I.A. telling him, My God, you failed, you better
get out of there right away before they find you and kill you. But Kermit
Roosevelt, on his own, decided that he would stay. He figured, I can still do
this, I was sent here to overthrow this government, I'm going to make up my own
plan.
AMY
GOODMAN: Now he had had help before from Norman Schwarzkopf, is that right,
Schwarzkopf's father?
STEPHEN
KINZER: There's a fantastic cast of characters in this story and one of them is
Norman Schwarzkopf, who had been the head of the investigation into the
Lindhburg kidnapping while with the New Jersey state police, had spent many
years in Iran during the 1940s, and was a very flamboyant figure with great influence
on the Shah. He was one of the people that Kermit Roosevelt brought in to
pressure the timid Shah into signing this fateful decree. Now, the decree
finally failed to have its desired effect, as I said. And then Roosevelt on his
own devised this plan where, first of all, he sent rioters out into the streets
to pretend that they were pro-Mossadegh. They were supposed to yell "I
love Mossadegh and communism. I want a people's republic!" and then loot
stores, shoot into mosques, break windows, and generally make themselves
repugnant to good citizens. Then he hired another mob to attack his first mob,
thereby creating the impression that Iran was falling into anarchy. And finally
on the climactic day, August 19, 1953, he brought all his mobs together, mobilized
all of his military units, stormed a number of government buildings and then,
in the climactic gunbattle at Mossadegh's house, a hundred people were killed
until finally the coup succeeded, Mossadegh had to flee and was later arrested,
and the Shah, who had fled in panic at the first sign of trouble a few days
earlier, returned in triumph to Tehran and began what became 25 years of
increasingly brutal and repressive rule.
AMY
GOODMAN: That issue of the U.S. government funding both the people in the
streets who pretended that they were for Mossadegh but communist, and against
Mossadegh, pro-Shah, I would like our guest, professor Ervand Abrahamian,
Middle East and Iran expert at Baruch College, to comment on. This was a time,
the British had used the ruse of anti-communism supposedly to lure in the U.S.
Do you think the U.S. was fully well aware of the issue of oil being at the
core of this, and also them possibly getting a cut of those oil sales.
ERVAND
ABRAHAMIAN: Yes, I think oil is the central issue. But of course this was done
at the height of the Cold War, so much of the discourse at the time linked it
to the Cold War. I think many liberal historians, including of course Stephen
Kinzer's wonderful book here, even though it's very good in dealing with the
tragedy of the '53 coup, still puts it in this liberal framework that the
tragedy, the original intentions, were benign.--that the U.S. really got into
it because of the Cold War and it was hoodwinked into it by the nasty British
who of course had oil interests, but the U.S. somehow was different. U.S.
Eisenhower's interest, were really anti-communism. I sort of doubt that
interpretation. For me, the oil was important both for the United States and
for Britain. It's not just the question of oil in Iran. It was a question of
control over oil internationally. If Mossadegh had succeeded in nationalizing
the British oil industry in Iran, that would have set an example and was seen
at that time by the Americans as a threat to U.S. oil interests throughout the
world, because other countries would do the same. Once you have control, then
you can determine how much oil you produce in your country, who you sell it to,
when you sell it, and that meant basically shifting power from the oil
companies, both British Petroleum, Angloversion, American companies, shifting
it to local countries like Iran and Venezuela. And in this, the U.S. had as
much stake in preventing nationalization in Iran as the British did. So here
there was not really a major difference between the United States and the
British. The question really was on tactics. Truman was persuaded that he could
in a way nudge Mossadegh to give up the concept of nationalization, that
somehow you could have a package where it was seen as if it was nationalized
but, in reality, power would remain in the hands of Western oil companies. And
Mossadegh refused to go along with this facade. He wanted real nationalization,
both in theory and practice. So the Truman administration, in a way, was not
that different from the British view of keeping control. Then, the Truman
policy was then, if Mossadegh was not willing to do this, then he could be
shoved aside through politics by the Shah dismissing him or the Parliament in
Iran dismissing him. But again, it was not that different from the British
view. Where the shift came was that after July of '52, it became clear even to
the American ambassador in Iran that Mossadegh could not be got rid of through
the political process. He had too much popularity, and after July '53, the U.S.
really went along with the British view of a coup, indeed to have a military
coup. So even before Eisenhower came in, the U.S. was working closely with the
British to carry out the coup. And what came out of the coup was of course the
oil industry on paper remained Iranian, nationalized, but in reality it was
controlled by a consortium. In that consortium the British still retained more
than 50 percent, but the U.S. got a good 40 percent of that control.
AMY
GOODMAN: I said at the top, this month marks the 50th anniversary of America's
first intervention in the Middle East. I should have said, of America's first
overthrow of a democratically elected government. But, Stephen Kinzer, the
statement that you make in your book, it is not far-fetched to draw a line from
Operation Ajax, which the U.S. had called the coup through the Shah's
repressive regime and the Islamic revolution to the fireballs that engulfed the
World Trade Center in New York. Can you flush that out?
STEPHEN
KINZER: The goal of our coup was to overthrow Prime Minister Mossadegh and
place the Shah back in his throne. And we succeeded in doing that. But from the
perspective of decades of history, we can look back and ask whether what seemed
like a success really was a success. The Shah whom we brought back to power
became a harsh dictator. His repression set off the revolution of 1979, and
that revolution brought to power a group of fanatic anti-Western, religious
clerics whose government sponsored acts of terror against American targets, and
that government also inspired fundamentalists in other countries including next
door, Afghanistan, where the Taliban came to power and gave sanctuary to Al
Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. So, I think you can--while it's always difficult to
draw direct cause and effect lines in history--see that this episode has had
shattering effects for the United States. And let's consider one other of the
many negative affects this has had. When we overthrew a democratic government
in Iran 50 years ago, we sent a message, not only to Iran, but throughout the
entire Middle East. That message was that the United States does not support
democratic governments and the United States prefers strong-man rule that will
guarantee us access to oil. And that pushed an entire generation of leaders in
the Middle East away from democracy. We sent the opposite message that we
should have sent. Instead of sending the message that we wanted democracy, we
sent a message that we wanted dictatorship in the Middle East, and a lot of people
in the Middle East got that message very clearly and that helped to lead to the
political trouble we face there today.
AMY
GOODMAN: Right after the Shah was deposed by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the
Iranian revolution of 1979 and then the Iranian students took over the U.S.
embassy, I'm wondering, Professor Abrahamian, how often did the press, and
understanding through the hundreds of days that the hostages were held, go back
to the 1953 coup and explain the fears of the students that in 1953 the Shah
had fled thinking that the coup had been fought back and the U.S. brought him
back and that now that Jimmy Carter had allowed him into the United States,
that they might be staging another possible coup, leading the students to fear
this and to take the hostages.
ERVAND
ABRAHAMIAN: I think on this issue actually you see a big cultural gap between
the American public and the Iranian public. For the Iranian public, the '53
coup shapes basically Iranian history, as Stephen shows very much in his book.
But for Americans, the '53 coup was something unreal for them. It wasn't
something they were aware of. If they were aware it, it was like Jimmy Carter
saying that this was ancient history. For the U.S. it may have been ancient
history but for Iranians it was not. So when the students took over the
embassy, they actually called it the "den of spies" because they knew
that in '53 the coup had been actually plotted from the U.S. compound. So they
were--
AMY
GOODMAN: That very building that they took over.
ERVAND
ABRAHAMIAN: That very building. And that, for Iranians, was a central issue. In
the United States, if you watch how the media covered it here, it saw the
hostage crisis as Iranian emotional rampaging mobs in the streets calling for
death of America and the '53 coup was intentionally not brought into that
context. So you can go for reams of programs on the main channels in the United
States about the hostage crisis, which lasted 444 days, and you rarely get the
mention of the '53 coup. This was intentional. The media here did not want to
make that link to '53.
AMY
GOODMAN: Well, we're going to go right now back to an older documentary that
very much lays out what happened in '53, with interestingly enough, former
C.I.A. agents. I want to thank you, Professor Abrahamian, for being with us
from Baruch College, and Steven Kinzer, author of the new book, All the Shah's
Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror. Stay with us.
Democracy Now! is an
investigative news radio journal that’s a vitally important antidote to the
lies and deceptions of state/corporate media. The program is hosted by Amy
Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. To find out what radio stations near you air
Democracy Now!, or to listen to the program on-line, visit: www.democracynow.org
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